


A Clockwork Killjoy

by The_Divine_Fool



Category: A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Art, Astronomy, College, Frerard, M/M, Music, Science, Teacher-Student Relationship, Weed, clockwork orange, eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-08 10:23:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4301091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Divine_Fool/pseuds/The_Divine_Fool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alone in the world and miserably twenty-something, Gerard decides to move in with his little brother Mikey, who lives in the middle of nowhere, working and earning his Bachelor's degree at the local community college. But creepy stuff happens in Nowhere, and it's up to Gerard to save his new friends and his own brother from a sinister conspiracy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story does (almost goes without saying) draw some parallels to Anthony Burgess's _A Clockwork Orange_. It is not necessary to have read it or have watched Stanley Kubrick's rendition of it, but be warned you'll be facing some mediocre ethical dilemmas and depictions of violence and more importantly, a _patois_ of sorts similar to Burgess's Nadsat language (called Rotja, here). I'll be dropping easter eggs for fans of _Clockwork_ and obviously some MCR discography references, so, there's that. 
> 
> Relax, and enjoy the ride.

# ~Welcome to Hove City~

“Too much, you think?”

It was a weepy gray dawn in Hove City. Peering out the smudged window and smokey screen above the sink while self-consciously adjusting his jacket, Gerard spied mostly oily-looking white birds and early-rising fishermen milling about the ports. A cool, fishy mist had rolled in from the shores and spilled up into the city, covering the old cobbled sidestreets and muffling the pointed spires of Victorian style apartments and shops. Hove was beautiful; he really loved it, even loved his brother's tiny apartment and the cot he was cursed to sleep on like a freezing refugee, but there was something about the city that made him nervous. If he told Mikey about it he'd probably just get the old “you're too _anxious_ , Gee” speech, so he kept it to himself. 

“It's perfect,” His little brother mumbled, clapping down the lid on his coffee maker and starting the cycle with a forceful shove from a cold pale finger. “Not too over the top, not boring. I mean, no one'll give a kusht cal about it, but bother however you want.”

Gerard turned from the window to find his brother in the kitchenette (it wasn't hard) and watched the tired undergraduate shift about his routine for a moment. A piece of rye bread came out of the toaster oven. A thick sort of milk that was popular in Hove was poured into a mug with some homely looking cornflakes since the only bowl in the apartment was in the microwave with Gerard's quick oats. 

“Was that English?”

Mikey paused on his haj to the sofa in the main room and cracked a dicey smile at his older brother. “It's called Rotja. This city's been clogged up with students for so long it's developed its own dictionary of slang. Don't worry; you'll get used to it.”

Mikey's long limbs folded up with a rainy morning sigh and he prodded at the remote until the radio—part of a sweet stereo, turntable, and cassette player faux-wood unit bought secondhand for 45 bucks—stuttered to life over some Dvorak piece. 

“Slavonic Dances,” Mikey mutters around his breakfast, the damned telepath. 

“I can stop on the way back and buy some more common teacher-y things.” He continued grousing. “We should also get some groceries. Michelle Obama would shed _tears_ over your diet.”

“Who?”

Gerard's movements stilled, staring unblinking at the swirling milk-white galaxies in his coffee. “Michelle Obama? You know, the _First Lady_. Child health programs? Sweet potatoes? Her arms?”

Mikey's eyes never left their state of morning rapture over Slavonic Dances. He looked extra gray against the musty plaster wall and pale living room window fog. “Oh, I don't really follow politics now.”

One does not have to follow politics to know who the _president_ was, Gerard thought incredulously, but didn't push the matter. Mikey was probably just really tired or being intentionally dull. He couldn't help the nervous twinge in his gut, though.

Mikey carried on the previous conversation as if never interrupted. “And all I mean is no one will give a crap what you're wearing. They'll either be checking out your ass or wondering when their next drink will be.”

“They can't be that bad.” Gerard felt the need to defend the undergraduate classes of Port Orange Community College, if only to reassure himself. He carried the last of Mikey's chipped mugs into the carpeted main room where the microwave sat tastelessly on the floor beside the turntable. Bent down to grab his oatmeal and became extraordinarily hyper-aware of how his ass looked. “It's...not that bad. Right?”

“You're the Teaching Assistant for intro _Astronomy_ , bro. You'll be teaching druggy lewdies who need a lab science credit and thought Geology was too hard.”

“I'm the Assistant Professor, actually. More than a TA. I get an office. And a salary.” Gerard didn't know what a lewdie was but it didn't seem likely to mean “competent, respectful student.”

“You might wanna throw that back in, by the way. That piece of khul is more centrifuge than microwave.”

Breakfast was a quiet affair—always was, for the Way brothers—made unusual only by the dips and whorls of Slavonic Dances. Not exactly unpleasant, but unusual and just slightly disconcerting for Gerard. But, that was just him. Too anxious, as always.

On their way out the door of Mikey's third floor unit at 7 am, Gerard paused in the dark and flaking doorframe. “You're sure it's not too much?”

Mikey looked him up and down once more, and then again just to humor him. Gerard shuffled in his turquoise blue suit, straightened his red tie, adjusted the cuffs of his white collared shirt, and pushed back a few strands of freshly and exuberantly dyed red hair. 

“You're killin' it, Gee,” Mikey insisted with his hard hazel eyes. “Now get somebody to bonk in your off-time so I don't have to keep complimenting you. I know you just moved in and all, but you're bound to find _someone_ in this city who tickles you right.”

Hove City's new Assistant Professor barked and shoved at his brother, following him down the narrow stairs and out a series of (excessive, Gerard thought) bolted bulletproof fire doors and out into the cobbled streets and cold mist. Gerard had only recently graduated college with a Bachelor's in Fine Arts, a couple creative writing credits, and a willful minor in Astronomy. He'd spent most of the summer working dead-end jobs around his university, then on a whim and with the taste of a prophetic dream in his mouth, flew up north to live with his little brother after applying for a part-time position at the local community college. Who knew you could basically teach a class with nothing but a lousy minor?

Mikey had come a long way from his quiet high school counterpart, Gerard concluded, walking beside his only sibling in a strange city and finding he'd missed him more fiercely than he'd initially thought. He was still quiet, but it was a _still_ quiet, not a nervous quiet. His aggressively straightened high school hair and thin glasses had been exchanged for a styled blond undercut and Lasik eye surgery, and his awkward youthful lankiness was now a lesser lingering length. 

Gerard considered himself relatively unchanged since high school, though a record of his hair and fashion transformations over the years might indicate a roller coaster ride of emotional turmoil. Maybe that was true, but he still believed that turmoil was there broiling inside him with the usual cocktail of anxiety and uncertainty. He definitely _didn't_ want to be an assistant lecturer at a community college for the rest of his young adulthood, but it was a chance to change his scenery and spend some time with his brother, so he took it. But he was the same. The same bundle of fears.

A group of four or five dark adolescents and post-adolescents moved in the mist ahead of the brothers, baying and cawing away the quiet like vengeful crows. Long winding tails of cigarette smoke whipped away from a couple of them like swiftly fraying silk scarves. 

Gerard inhaled the soothing vespers of smoke, but the words he caught on the same breeze made almost no sense to him at all. Suddenly, he realized there were dozens of groups just like the crows moving all around him and Mikey. A few of them ducked around other groups on skateboards, dark shapes whistling into the mist and disappearing. The weepy gray morning blended quietly with the sloughing mist and trapped the city like a snowglobe, and from every direction its small inhabitants cackled in their gibberish language. Gerard was suddenly scared shitless.

Too busy finding Walking Mountain pose and taking yoga breaths, Gerard was jerked back to fight-or-flight when Mikey clapped him on the shoulder and began moving firmly away from him. They'd arrived at the Student Center, and he was off to class. They both were.

“Chill out, Party Poison,” His little brother called cheekily on his way out. “It'll all float on.” 

Gerard is left explaining himself to empty space—Party Poison was just a _character_ who _happened_ to have red hair, not some self-aggrandizing fictional _fix-it_ for Gerard's tremendous social anxiety—as Mikey's familiar face fades away to be replaced by the dark milling crows from the mist, collecting in thicker packs and moving in zigzagged lines through the student center for their early classes.

> Welcome to Hove City.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _you thought he'd be an art teacher, didn't you? >>_

#  Viddy Well, Brother... 

Frank wiped his rookers on his jeans, still sticky from an orange he'd gutted that morning for breakfast, washed down with a bit of moloko and a half-snoutie. Still had a pocket full of half-spent cigarette. His idea of a good first day of classes was joyriding with his droogs, maybe packing a fat bowl in the amphitheater. It definitely did _not_ include a perfunctory meeting with his assigned academic advisor: a lady prawf with wine-stained teeth and a goblin gray brow that wiggled whenever some poor chal futzed with her careful clockwork. He'd creeched like a violated devotchka when Keller hauled him to her office and away from the speeder line. Frank was worse than useless without a little speeder in the morning, even if the chal at the register often mistakenly plugged it up with cream and sugar.

“Whatdya mean, I need a _lab science_?”

Prawf Keller folded her rookers on her desk. “Like I said, Frank, the university requires certain distribution credits--”

“This ain't a _university_ , it's a _community college_. Ride that fine-lookin' horse back into its stable, prawf, and waive the credit. I have better things to do than poke around at yeast in a lab for four hours a week.”

Keller's goblin gray brow furrows at the student. “I think we _both_ know that's not true, Mr. Iero. You _will_ take a lab science this semester, I will _not_ waive the requirement, and _stop_ using that rot-jaw vernacular in my office.”

Frank sat back and crossed his arms, made a small effort to limit his Rotja. “What lab science would take a bum Music major anyway?”

Keller smiles a cruel smile, flicks her straight, 40s-gray hair over one shoulder. “The Astronomy department will be glad to have you. I have even taken the liberty of adding you to the register of the intro hybrid course: Exploring the Cosmos.”

“Oh, fucking choo _dess_ ny! Unload a kusht roll of polly for the school and they getcha in the zoobies with _distribution_ requirements winking from their bugatties--”

“ _Enough_ of that jib, I said!” Keller's matching goblin knuckles crackle like reeling rusty anchors around her pen.

Frank dropped his head in his hands and groaned through his fingers in despair.

His string of offensive Rotja only contributed to a long rolling of eyes from Prawf Keller. “Listen, Frank, I know it seems pointless, but you weren't enrolled in enough courses to keep your student status _anyway_ , so... Let me give you a little _sovet_ : try the class for the week, and if it's really so dinlo--”

“ _Nine part_ dinlo, I'll tell you right now--”

She leveled him with a stern glare.

“If it seems really so senseless by the end of the week then come see me and I'll see about possibly matching a different class to the credit, _within reason_. Understand?”

He dragged a rooker over his eyes with a massive sigh. “Yeah, but--”

“Good,” Keller snapped. “And let me remind you, you've been on academic suspension since last fall, and when your status goes to the Board for review at the end of this semester, it would really help to have completed your distribution credits.”

“What's _that_ supposed to mean.”

“It _means_ ,” She drags out the word, the old baboochka. “If your academic standing doesn't improve, the directors may choose to expel you rather than waste resources on a lost cause.”

Frank coughed the ashes from his throat, but couldn't recover enough to respond. If he got kicked out of college his em and pee would _oobivat_ him even if it meant flying out from New Jersey to wrap their rookers around his throat. 

Keller sat up and straightened her glasses. “Enough of this rokker. You should be on your way. Lecture starts at 8:30.”

Frank's jaw dropped. “It's an _eight-thirty class_ are you _cracked_?”

Her goblin brow stayed shrewd and quiet, dark eyes boring holes in his poor gulliver. “ _Clockwork_ , Mr. Iero. Now get _out_.”

Frank held back his argument and clipped his own heels out of Keller's hidey-hole on the third floor of the student center. He had barely a minute to spare to hike out to the physical sciences building, but instead of nashing off like a good student, decided to edge into the speeder line to wash the snoutie taste from his zoobies. 

It was ten past when he slipped into the physics' department's only lecture hole. It was a great auditorium-like basement, filled like a bottle of fizzy with pockets of students buzzing between bubbles of glaringly empty seats; maybe fifty lewdies spread over the 300-capacity lecture hole in groups of three or four. Frank juggled his steaming cup of speeder between gloved palms while his naked fingertips pushed prodded and punished students who refused to let him by. Eventually he settled down close to the end of an aisle in the upper rear of the hole, his unabashedly late entrance stirring a few ripples around and down the spotted seats. 

The prawf was a woman. 

Frank's wildly selective ears tuned out the introductory bijoux. He leaned forward in his seat and squinted just long enough to determine if she was good-looking, but the distance was too great and he promptly gave up, propping his Docs up high on the seat in front of him—little white skulls leering laughing at him from the leather—and settling back in anticipation of a long fifty minutes.

At some point between leveling up his Gengar and challenging the Elite Four, one of the students along his row walked a few hand-outs over to him: syllabus and some kind of chart covered in lines and dots and tiny poorly photocopied lettering. 

He could hardly breathe through his frustration and disgust. Some part of him knew there was a well-worn tradition of diversity requirements in all American schools, knew that on some level they were logical, at least to stop churning out Philosophy and Arts majors who tinker for a while in the streets before getting themselves dratsed. But for some reason every breath in Hove City shortened his sight, fueled a long spittling flame inside him, trapping Frank behind a churning broiling screen of pubescent self-centeredness. _Fuck_ Astronomy, he thought. _Fuck_ Keller, and _fuck_ Port Orange Community College. 

One of his droogs was texting him in constant lazy whorls, obviously enjoying a smoke in the early moonset. Frank burned with jealousy and kicked his heels up more defiantly against the seat in front of him, scowling ferociously down at the prawf and her small herd of assistants.

 _(Where are you)_ Bob demanded in between lines of straining poetry about the creeching gulls and pretty devotchkas. 

_(science lecture)_ He avoided the word “astronomy.” It felt childish.

_(...the hell)_

Frank snorted. His droog would probably tease the shit out of him for attending his 8:30. His academic life was already so poor without Bob's joking discouragement that he was almost tempted to avoid the chal all day and go oddy-knocky just for that reason. 

_(distribution credits or some cal. Needed a lab.)_

_(Horrorshow, man. 8:30s all semester?)_

_(3divvus a week)_

_(dratsing 2night? Fresh spice)_

Bob could always be counted on to keep up the steady supply of green. It was just one of the reasons the guy remained Frank's best and oldest droog. Not that their friendship was contingent on weed, but it made for more interesting nights of dratsing in Hove City. 

_(definitely. Especially after this sun and stars khul)_

_(chooooodessny. Anyone interesting there?)_

_(No... Hang on some orange wantsa rokker)_

Frank finally viddied up from his phone and slowly clapped the lid on his softly singing Nintendo. Some orange was indeed shuffling his feet to Frank's immediate left, a guy in a blue suit looking as if he'd swallowed one of Prawf Keller's long goblin nails along with his moloko that morning. 

“So keres?” He fired, looking the blue-suited malchick up and down suspiciously. A head of rouge-red hair and milky complexion reflected too much light in the dark lecture hall. It set him apart from the others, the dark drab murders of students fluttering in the lower rows; he was a strange seraph in their midst, like a lost dove or a hesitant alien visitor. 

The poor chal's dark eyebrows shoot up, leaving him looking even more hesitant and alien than before. He tucks an imaginary red hair behind his ear, looking around and away as if mapping out an escape route.

“U-um. Have you finished the—um.. the assignment?”

Sweet voice. Pitched quiet and earnest like the moonset he was missing out on. Frank's bubbling rage surged and misfired at the reminder of his plight. “Nash off, koshka. Find someone else to copy from; I haven't done it.”

Frank tries to lose interest and turn back to his GameBoy, but a new expression creased the chal's sweet mouth and square jaw with concern and Frank watched the transformation with rapt attention; it was slow, almost tired, but so terrifically genuine Frank kind of wanted to see what other expressions he could make.

“I'm the Assistant Professor, actually.”

Frank stared, enticed. A sidekick prawf, then—new to the game. That explained the nervousness, and the way his Rotja met blank looks. A hesitant alien, indeed. 

“My bad,” Frank leered to elevate his own air of strange cruelty in the alien's eyes. “You're a little far from your post.” He glanced meaningfully toward the teaching well at the bottom of the hole where the lady prawf paced back and forth in front of a massive overhead projection. Frank purposely chose a seat in the way back not only for easy escape but also to evade the killer radars of roaming TAs and APs like blue-suit. 

The new AP dropped to a crouch to bring himself more or less eye level with Frank, dark pocket glazzies originally hidden in shadow suddenly become hard hazel and red rimmed. Glanced down at the well as if the lady prawf were a starving wolf and he an injured faun. Frank put two and two together and made 'em square dance.

“Don't like the prawf, huh.”

“Uh, no, that's not--!” Long pale fingers suddenly waving around, head shaking. An overdisplay of denial.

Frank's smirk was an improperly malicious mold of his usual arrogance; frustration made him thoughtless and crude. He seemed to watch himself from afar. “Afraid of the finer sex, koshka? Looking for a little in-and-out?”

The AP reels back on his heels, passing through ropes of shadow before looming back with a new hardened gaze. “Is there a word for 'presumptuous little shit' in this gibberish language of yours?”

“Nadmenny bratchny, maybe.”

He shook his head slowly. “That's too complicated. You're a presumptuous little shit.”

Frank's careful manly chuckle quickly cracked into quiet hyena giggles. Through half-closed glazzies he saw the Assistant Professor's lips part crookedly—lower on the left side—into a grin. Caught a glimpse of pretty and imperfect zoobies quickly replaced by thin-lipped bashfulness.

“Don't you have other little shits to help?”

“Ah, but this little shit hasn't finished his assignment,” Glanced back down at the well. “And he's furthest from Professor Antony.”

“I think you're a little too honest for this position, koshka.” 

“Look, you should probably call me Mr. Way,” he said flatly. “And I know I'm not doing this very well, okay? I'm new to this, _all_ of this. Think of me as a freshman. Well, a freshman with power.”

“Frank,” He tongued once, deftly, at his lip ring and watched Mr. Way's glazzies flicker down for an instant, as most did. “How old are you?”

“Frank,” Way says, tasting the new knowledge. “Shut up.”

“Easy, dedoochka, it was just an honest question--”

“What's that?” He interrupts, suspicion drawing a crease between his dark brows. “Dooch-ka...I don't like the sound of that one.”

“ _De_ doochka. Means old man.”

Mr. Way rocks back on his heels, looking betrayed. Frank marveled again at how genuine and readable each of the Assistant Professor's emotional states was. “Why would you say _that_? I'm not old.”

“Well, I wouldn't know.”

“You... you naddy brot--”

“Nadmenny bratchny,” Frank corrected, words rolling easily and naturally off his tongue.

Pale rookers waved again. “Whatever. Just stop--”

“Everything okay over here, Gerard?”

Frank startled at the new voice. Mr. Way startled even more, his unsteady crouch nearly sending him toppling to the floor. A figure had melted from the shadows, a man who could probably come eye-to-eye with Prawf Keller's high horse, higher if he counted the dark crowning glory afro that was blocking out what little light hit the back row of the lecture hole. 

“Yeah,” Mr. Way recovered, leaned an elbow on Frank's armrest to look up at the Teaching Assistant. “Thanks, Ray.”

Ray saluted kindly at Mr. Way, but then his shadowed glazzies appeared to angle down at Frank. “Don't be afraid to clop'm around if they give you any cal, okay? Keeps the clockwork around here.”

“Erm, yeah. Yep.” Mr. Way affirmed, and smiled uneasily—no zoobies—until the TA continued his rounds among the students.

“Why is everyone so obsessed with clockwork around here? I think I've heard that like six times already.”

It took the sparse words of one roaming TA to remind Frank that he hated Port Orange Community College. “You're not supposed to be talking to me. Teaching to the dinlo lewdies in the back of the hole isn't according to clockwork. Helping lost causes isn't clockwork. Helping chals like _me_ isn't clockwork.”

“Like you?” Confused, earnest. 

“Go help someone else.”

“Stop telling me what to do.”

“I'll move to the front.” He threatened. 

Hazel glazzies narrowed. “No you won't. You wouldn't be able to play Pokemon in front of the TAs and Antony.”

Frank huffed and shrunk down in his seat. “I don't even know what the assignment is.”

“It's really easy,” Mr. Way says, like every Assistant Professor in the history of time _ever_ says. Then with a quick jerk he grabbed the chart with the squiggly line on it that Frank had stuck under his ass. 

The AP takes a deep breath and his glazzies are wide and honest so Frank stares down at his squatting professor and tries not to forget the unabashed academic purity of the moment. “This sine wave,” His finger traces the squiggly line. “Is an ecliptic star path—in this case, it's the path our sun takes in the sky. You ever go out at sunset?”

“Moonrise,” Frank corrects softly. 

“Well, in different seasons the sun won't follow the same path in the sky, right? Sometimes it's lower, sometimes it's higher. This straight line,” His finger traces the x-axis of the chart. “Is our horizon, our point of view on earth. So if we find a certain date on this line, we can find the position of the sun and which constellations will be visible in the sky.”

“So what am I s'posed to do with it?”

“Professor Antony wants you guys to find your astrological sign. Do you know yours?”

“Scorpio,” He smirked, noticing Mr. Way's glazzies dart to the scorpion inked on the side of his neck.

“Actually, if we're going with the idea that your sign is the constellation you were born under, it may have been different from the one Astrology gave you.”

“What? Why?”

“Because our skies have changed since the 12 houses of the Zodiac were established. The movement of the Earth through the galactic plane and its precession—which you'll learn about later—means we've been dropping babies under different constellations for centuries.”

“Shit man,” Frank swore, leaning forward to squint at the chart. “This sucks. I'm not actually a Scorpio?”

Mr. Way smiled. “Astronomy and Astrology are strictly different animals. This doesn't have to affect you at all. Let's figure it out anyway. What's your birthday?”

Frank silently assembled his knuckles and pointed them at the AP. Hazel glazzies squinted and widened and squinted again. 

Tentatively: “Halloween?”

“They got holidays where you come from, dedoochka?”

Way didn't even complain about the identifier. “That's _awesome_.”

Frank blew the soft overgrown fringe of his mohawk out of his eyes and shrugged, long and languid. Waited for the lesson to continue but instead the Assistant Professor stared blank and reverent at the in-between space. 

“All these years I've been celebrating your birthday with fake blood and silly string--”

“And I would _love_ to do it again this year, koshka,” Frank interrupted slyly. “But maybe you can tell me what my real astrological sign is?”

“Oh! Right, well, just, you know, find the date.” Long pale finger, red at the cuticle, follows the lines of the chart until it comes to a standstill in the October range. 

“Huh,” Mr. Way huffed, and Frank scanned the confusing jumble of tiny constellations around his fingertip. “You were born under Libra and Virgo, right in the middle, really.”

Frank sat back, a little bummed. “I like Scorpio better.”

“Me too,” The professor murmured, finger trailing back to the constellation of Scorpius. “Under the old skies you would've been born between Scorpius and Ophiuchus.”

“Never heard of Ophiuchus.”

“The lost 13th sign,” He sighs, grins briefly up at Frank before pointing out a constellation between Scorpio and Sagittarius. “We spend only thirteen days under Ophiuchus, the Serpent-Bearer, so it's usually written off. It's the only sign modeled after an actual guy: the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Imhotep. Imhotep brought healing and medicine to mankind. You've probably seen his symbol on the sides of ambulances and hospitals: the snake winding around the staff. He's also in the Bible as the Hebrew Joseph, just in case you weren't already totally enthralled with this guy.”

“Dude, just teach this class. You're amazing.”

His hair is blood in the dim light. “I don't think Barbara would be too thrilled--”

“What's your history with the prawf anyway?”

“Frank, I don't think it's really--”

“ _C'moonnn_ ,” He whined. “If you think I'm passing notes with any of the lewdies in here you're cracked. Your horse is safe. _Plus_ you'll never find a cooler droog than me in this hole.”

“Wow, so glad my horse is okay,” Mr. Way remarked drily. 

Frank rolled his eyes, waved a rooker dismissively. “You know, your _horse_ , your reputation, your professional moral high ground--”

“She's my ex-girlfriend. From, like, a long time ago. So it's not really important.”

Frank leaned forward dangerously close to his Assistant Professor, till he could smell the speeder on his breath and see the small dark roots beneath his red hairline. “That why you're up here hiding with me?”


	3. Chapter 3

# The Rite

It was 2 o'clock in the morning, and Gerard was restless.

After several moments considering the odds of optimistically ignoring his tireless eyelids, arranging and rearranging his uncomfortable limbs, Gerard sat up. He rubbed the heels of his hands into the pits of his eyes and planted his cold toes in the wormy trampled carpet of Mikey's small living room. His pale shins and red knees held his dry eyes in rapture for a few moments, just long enough for a sound to break through his half-waking daze. 

His small snort of recognition was thunderous in the evening quiet. Over by the couch under the living room window Mikey's stereo system thrummed on its lowest volume setting. Gerard probably hadn't even noticed it when he fell asleep, but in the dead of night the notes of Stravinsky's terrifying Rite of Spring were unmistakable even channeled through the fuzz of the local Classical station. 

His knees didn't hold his interest for long, and soon Gerard was hopping into some sweatpants and shuffling around his brother's kitchenette like a polite poltergeist or a hesitant alien visitor. He'd never been a sound sleeper, sure, but Gerard always considered himself a committed insomniac, if anything. He either slept through the night, or he didn't. None of this waffling sleep, wake, repeat bullshit. 

A whale's mating song echoed around the kitchen for a second; his squeedlyspooch making a racket again. But he wasn't hungry, didn't think he was sick, just _needed_ something.

The smudged glass and smokey screen of the window over the sink kept Hove City's—perpetual, it seemed—fog at bay. The white-gray dementor babies swirled, sank and finally stuck to the streets and storefronts below. In astronomy, a planet's albedo is a measure of its reflectiveness, usually effected by polar ice caps at the poles and thick cloud layers in the atmosphere. The higher the albedo rating, the less sunlight got through to touch the surface.

Hove City had its own albedo of maritime fogs. Beyond the city rim, it seemed only the dark and deadly cosmos waited, as if Hove were a small exoplanet spinning in the black under a sun so far away Gerard couldn't remember ever seeing it aside from glimmers behind the thick daytime clouds.

The small orange glow of periodic streetlamps guided Gerard to the greater glow of the corner market. He didn't know exactly when he'd decided he needed to pick up milk, but once the idea surfaced it had clung and grown like an insistent zit until all he could think was _milk, now's as good a time as any to pick up milk._

In fact the Astronomy professor was so absorbed by his single-minded pursuit of groceries that he didn't really register his surroundings until the cold bit at his heels, rolling up from the port. But even when it had slithered up his spine and tugged at his jacket collar, Gerard kept walking. Channeled his inner Party Poison. Party Poison wouldn't give a shit about a little fog, a few creepy lamps, a little chill or some weird-ass noises echoing from far away off the cobbled streets. He imagined the comforting weight of a gun at his hip. 

The corner market was a parasitic affair always cluttered with customers in the daytime. It fed off the steady flood of students and catered to its specific interests—instant noodles, bachelors' frozen dinners, a variety of sex-related items, and a curiously expansive collection of recreational children's toys—with hugely inflated prices. Open 24/7, sold mostly lukewarm gritty coffee, and had small cafe-style seating areas inside the front window and outside the front door.

There were no parking lots in Hove City, Gerard had noticed. And very little in the way of sidewalk or room for parallel parking. No garages. Just a bus stop, at the city's edge. 

Jack-o-lanterns with small-pox scars leered at him from the mismatched patio chairs and tables outside. Breezing past his sadistic audience, Gerard breathed a sigh of relief once inside the door and beneath oppressive fluorescent lighting. The cashier—a work-study student on a rotten shift—dozed behind the counter with a CD player and earphones still humming.

At first he was surprised how empty the place was, before realizing that there'd only been one day of classes. The college market probably saw more activity in the twilight hours of mid-semester and finals. 

Gerard was just reaching for the handle on the cooler, eying up a pint of Moo-Moo 2% which appeared to be the only option for milk that wasn't that weird moloko stuff, when a shard of glass pecked his eyebrow like a mosquito bite.

Oddly, he perceived the sound of the mighty crash after the sting in his eyebrow. His already rickety heartbeat shocked into a frenzy as adrenalin flooded his system and slowed time. The sound of the glass door shattering seemed to pause and hold at the peak of the clatter, the high-pitched squeal making Gerard's ears ring. 

Dark shapes moved in his peripheral. He was vaguely aware that the corner market was being trashed. His hand never quite made it to the handle of the cooler.

The moon in Hove City transformed the morning crows to nighttime ghouls. 

A yellowed, peeling latex Frankenstein's monster mask hovered before the Assistant Professor, attached to a human body. It stared at him, moved almost lethargically though Gerard didn't know if it was the creature or his own slowed perception of time. Two things happened at once; a gentle hand grasped the arm on a vain quest for dairy and forced it to his side, and at the same time the ghoul's other hand rose with one outstretched finger to the yellowed lips of the Frankenstein mask. 

_Shhh._

A massive net weight 12 oz. bag of Cheetos is cut down in its prime and dies with a great gasp of orange powder as it is crushed beneath the weight of the snackfood aisle shelves. If not outraged by the addition of artificial flavoring and dyes covering his shoes, Gerard wouldn't've had the balls or willpower to look away from the Frankenstein ghoul swaying like a king cobra before him.

A darted glance to his right only reveals a more tragic scene. Among dead and dying merchandise, shattered glass, oozing tubes, and party confetti, more dark ghouls tramp around the corner market. Black against the fluorescent lighting. Covered head to toe. In a matter of seconds they had all but leveled the microcosm of college needs.

Something else was beating along with Gerard's rabbit heart, something that made his frozen neurons blink and rustle a little at the memory. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was playing over the quiet market radio. Had it followed him? 

The Frankenstein ghoul barked something so quickly and so steeped in Rotja gibberish that a net zero of comprehension dawned on Gerard's stunned countenance. His hand still itched to grab the milk. Suddenly he was being hauled by the front of his shirt through the wrecked aisles, forced to watch the coolers shrink into the distance behind mounds of savaged merchandise. Somewhere along the way the ghoul picked up a plastic yellow wiffle ball bat from the recreational sports section. Frankenstein used the bat to dishonor the dead, kicking up geysers of Bic pens and shaving cream and Top Ramen packets from the floor. 

At the front of the market, the work-study student at the counter had lost her headphones in the chaos. She stared emptily out at the half dozen vengeful spirits lurking around her store, and the three now approaching her in the flickering light. 

“So keres with-a dedoochka?” A red motorcycle helmet asked him, though Gerard couldn't hear anything past the bright yellow bumper sticker shouting GOOD LUCK to him on the helmet visor. 

The ghoul holding him tightened his grip and hauled him in closer, and Gerard's Cheeto-dusted shoes fumble in the garbage. 

“Who is-he?” Another ghoul asked, winding in close to eye Gerard through the leering laughing eyepits of a demonic Japanese mask. 

His captor shrugged. “Odin baxtalo koshka, that's all.”

The Japanese demon laughed. Helmet cocked his head. Frankenstein slammed the plastic bat with a resounding _kerrang!_ on the counter. The cashier's eyes darted to the latex mask. 

“All the polly, devotchka, or we'll spill your keeshkas to the moonrise,” Frankenstein demanded with cocksure enunciation. 

After a moment of silence, the wiffle bat slammed the counter again and the gaping latex eyes turned to face the other ghouls, who immediately clapped and wolf-whistled to urge the ringleader on. _Ringmaster_ , Gerard thought. Like in a circus act.

It took one more swing, this time dumping the sunglasses display beside the cash register to the floor, for the student to punch the No Sale button on the register and begin dumping cash into a backpack held open by red helmet ghoul. 

“ _No_ ,” Gerard whispered, half to himself for trying to get involved and half to the girl so she wouldn't give in. 

Helmet whipped around, so the girl stopped shoveling twenties, so Japanese demon hissed, so Frankenstein's plastic bat hit the floor. 

In an instant the unfortunate professor was nose to peeling nose with the latex mask, looking past the ripped eyeholes to a pair of manic human ones. Couldn't even find an eye color before something cold pressed to his temple and a loud metallic click reverberated through it and into his skull. The strange circus act of a robbery Gerard had been witnessing suddenly was more than adolescent vandalism; he'd never seen such impulsive, unrestrained violence before. 

“ _Besh!_ ” The ghoul roared, voice cracked and inhuman.

The gun moved to point between his eyes, a black 9 mm pistol with yellow spray paint over the finish. Like a twisted evolution of the yellow wiffle bat. “Besh!”

Gerard didn't know what to do, so he shrunk, slowly shifting to his knees, his hands, and then, when the ghoul rapped the floor with the barrel of the gun and barked again, Gerard went all the way down on his belly like a hostage, hands splayed on either side of his head.

“ _Besh_ , koshka,” Frankenstein finally whispered, mellow as a windchime. 

Frozen like prey, stuck to the floor like a worm, Gerard felt fearful _run, run for your life_ tears prick at his eyes, eyes so wide and otherwise dry he couldn't blink the tears loose if he wanted. This was _insane_. Starting off with leaving the fucking house at _2 am_ and ending with the fucking _gun_ to his head. Who went out to buy milk in the middle of the night? What kind of 24-hour market parks _jack-o-lanterns_ on their stoop in _September_? That's just _asking_ to be burgled by spirits of the night. Gerard's general fear of the gang was augmented by his confusion at their language. The words sounded English sometimes, but it felt like he just couldn't arrange them properly to form meaning in his head, and his blood was pumping too fast to even concentrate. A smiling cartoon ramen logo winked at him from a wrapper on the floor. 

Hove City was a different world, a violent world, and he was just a visitor, an alien in their foggy extraterrestrial embryo. 

When all the “polly” was loaded up, Helmet tossed the bag to demon mask, who tossed the bag to another ghoul wearing sunglasses and a bandana, who then passed it on outside of Gerard's vision.

“The snoutie, too,” Frankenstein insists, picking up the wiffle bat to jab it at the cashier's throat. “The good ones up top.”

Obediently, the girl pulled down the meager supplies of cigarettes from the wall behind the counter and handed them over to Frankenstein, who threw the boxes one by one behind him. Presumably the other ghouls collected these gifts, but Gerard heard a fair few simply crash into the wasted aisles. Finally, the ringmaster collects the last of the “snoutie” for his own use and turns his back to the work-study student. 

Slow, even steps. Doc martens, he realizes. If not for the muscle atonia imposed on his whole body from the fight-flight- _freeze_ responses swamping his cerebrum, Gerard would have startled at the slap of a pack of cigarettes landing on his back. 

“ _Very_ baxtalo koshka,” The lead ghoul whistled, then trudged away. The others piled after him through the shattered door, receding like fluttering crows with howls mauling the quiet night.

Long after the howls faded Gerard and the cashier remained still and silent. Stravinsky raged on in the rustling silence. Somewhere behind him bags still crinkled and fell over each other, boxes shifted under new weight, a dial tone buzzed from behind the desk. But Stravinsky was insistent, and Gerard's heart stuttered with every frantic spring blossom in the string section. He remembered the famous last four notes of the Rite of Spring just as they rolled on musical thunderheads over the emptied corner market:

> D-E-A-D.

Sometime around 3 in the morning, Gerard had peeled himself from the floor, drifted through the night, and stumbled back into bed.

Some Party Poison. 

He had a dream all the money from the cash register was being sent to the moon in lighted paper lanterns. They floated up into the atmosphere and entered the moon through its craters, lighting up the Maria with a leery jack-o-lantern grin. In return for the offering, the blood moon suspends its town, gives its followers power and authority over their own lives provided they uphold its violent standard.


	4. Chapter 4

# The Dratsing

“Aren't you late for science club?”

Frank took a pull on Bob's pipe and held in his breath while he handed off the glass to Mikey. He slowly loosed the captive smoke to the early moonset sky, watched it curl and bump against the leaves of the tree he and his droogs sat under. Of _course_ he was the only poor bratchny with an 8:30 lecture on Fridays, so he was the brunt of cruel reminders from cheery Bob and Mikey. Bob would sooner crack his own zoobies than register for an early class, and Mikey only has Monday-Wednesday earlies. 

“I go, Mikey goes. You hate being oddy-knocky so just admit you're afraid to viddy me go.”

“ _Boo-hoo-hoo_ ,” Mikey chimed lazily, blowing smoke to the silver cloudblanket. 

“That's bullshit and you know it, Iero. But go ahead and ookadeet, little brother,” Bob grinned, shifting his back against the tree trunk and picking some fallen leaves from his blond hair like a bolshy bear. “Viddy how long it takes me to come nashing after you.”

Frank stood and adjusted his fingerless gloves grimly. “I'll go whenever I feel.”

“You'll miss attendance.” Bob challenged. “Your lady-advisor will pass whispers to the Board.”

Shrug. “The bezoomny AP covers for me.”

Mikey blinked in the middle of a second pull— _double-dipper_ , Frank thought—as if suddenly disturbed. “Bezoomny?”

Frank paused and glanced at his quiet droog. Mikey didn't often express interest in others' troubles. “Maybe not bezoomny. But you know, smartish. Little starry but rinkeni, too, now I think of it...”

Bob snorted. “Y'wanna filly around with-a prawf, huh? Horrorshow, dude--”

“Rinkeni?” Mikey snorted right back, glazzies narrowed into thin dark crescents.

“Shut _up_ , dude. Y'haven't even had a good look,” Frank insisted, but Mikey was long past the high-gone, caught in a rapid spin of laughter and collapsing in the soft grass.

Frank rolled his glazzies high and glanced at Bob. “Still on for filmdrome tonight?”

“Think so.”

Shifted his backpack strap. “Well, let me know if this guffing khul changes his mind.”

“10-4, Frankie. Don't be late, now.”

“You wound me, Bob Bryar. I'm an academic, true and true.”

“A caffeine-piggy, maybe. I know you're just going for speeder.”

After passing through the student center for his speeder, Frank indulged in a half-snoutie left from the morning to counter the foggy effects of THC. Fucking Mikey. He was allowed to be attracted to whoever he wanted, ptitsa or malchick, young or starry, droog or bratchny; hell, the AP wasn't even that starry. Didn't seem it, anyway. He wasn't intending to propose to the idiot or anything; Way was just some out-of-town lewdie Frank saw three divvus a week for a hot minute. 

His frustration grew like a virus and he felt himself growing thin, transparent-like, until the white pillowsoft fog on either side of the beatpath blew through his skin and cluttered in his throat. Hove fed his nascent rage like a guffing corpse feeds a fire, slimmed his awareness until the dratsing effect took. 

_Drats, drats,_ he had to crack something-someone up, he had to crark to the moonrise with his droogs. Felt a heavy weight in his hand and a familiar rush of power—

The physical sciences building loomed before him—real sudden because the building was too squat and settled in the dirt to rise above the fog like the English department's nadmenny spires and clocktowers. The main building was a George Orwell nightmare box called Kubrick: few windows and fewer light-hearted inhabitants. It was dark brick on the outside and polished concrete on the inside. The Astronomy lecture hole was attached by a concrete bridge from Kubrick's second floor, from which you spiraled down a dark stairwell and fell into the hole from the far back. Long slope to the catacombs below. 

Barbara Antony milled around by the projector. He'd gotten a good look at her since the first class and she was moderately rinkeni but the ferocious student-prawf rift made him hate her on instinct. Plus her lectures were all chepooka to him. So far it had taken Way's patient rokker for him to even begin to 'explore the cosmos.'

_Way_. Yeah, yes, _that's_ the chal you should crack up. Would be easy. 

The dratsing urge was still hammering in his skull. Frank was not Frank; Frank was outside Frank, billowed away by the pillowsoft fog. During the sputtering split-consciousness phase a vesper of logic he blamed on the THC floated back to his wrathful flesh vessel: but Way's from _outside_ Hove. Might not forgive you, might not understand that you're not you.

_Just an AP_. Just one sidekick prawf in a barrel of piggies. _Drats, drats—_

Antony was already leading the lecture. Frank thought she sounded an awful lot like Prawf Keller today. Her small herd of TAs grazed in the first few rows, some with glazzies peeled for dissenting students and others futzing around just to look busy. Frank's glaz was drawn involuntarily to the dark crowning afro of the TA Ray Toro. He'd found the chal's super-villain full name on the class syllabus. Only time he'd ever looked at a syllabus for long. Standing next to Ray in the well beneath Antony's podium, as if both were determined to hang on to Antony's near blind spot, was the Assistant Professor.

Frank's drats-ready targeting system locked on to its red-haired foe and—

It had taken a grand total of fourteen divvus for Way's stilted professionalism to fall by the wayside. His first blue suit was swapped for collared shirts and playful bowties which were swapped for his final evolutionary form of tired and overworked prawf: jackets with chewed sleeves, band tees and jeans. 

As he took his seat in the back of the lecture hole, Frank noticed Way's body language shift, a small tension arriving and then draining through an aborted twitch of the right hand and an expression Frank couldn't read from so far away. Like a wave. His AP may be kind of a social idiot but he did treat Frank like a human being and not another lost cause on academic probation. 

Frank blamed the surge of quasi-affection that snuffed the dratsing urges on the influence of Bob's spice, since he was still spinning on a fuzzy moonset high. 

_(M says no-go tonight. Forgot his brat is staying with him and doesn't wanna keep him up.)_

Frank groaned aloud, closed Bob's message window on his phone and opened Mikey's.

_(I didn't even know you had a brat)_

_(Sorry.. forgot about filmdrome.)_

_(So to bog with him and let's do it.)_ Frank doubted this approach would work. Mikey was pretty private on family matters. They all were, actually. Frank couldn't actually remember the last time he or Bob or any of his droogs had even mentioned a parent or family member. Freshman talk about them, maybe. But then Hove beats the dependencies out of you and drops you into rank with the rest. Oddy-knocky.

_(I would but he's shivvy gotta work tomorrow)_

_(we can clop him out)_

_(long as we don't accidentally oobivat him, then fine.)_

_(her'y?)_

_(yeah yeah I'll let Bob know)_

Filmdrome was back on. _Horrorshow_. If Frank didn't get weekly filmdrome with his droogs he'd go full bezoomny in this place. Only spice and baxt could beat off the dratsing for a whole night. Not that Frank had a problem with ultraviolence but he _did_ have a problem with interacting— _one way or another_ —with town oranges every night; avoiding them was his real priority. 

“Please tell me you have the homework.”

Frank's head shoots up, zoobies bared in an automatic jack-o-grin upon hearing the familiar voice, quiet and earnest. There was Way, an armful of papers, glazzies scanning the rest of the hole nervously. Stranger in a strange land. Frank realized that the herd of TAs was roaming, collecting paper from the lewdies below. Then the words hit him properly.

“Homework?”

The Assistant Professor groaned as if Frank's failure actually disappointed him—Frank believed it, somehow—and Frank's leftover dratsing urges drew imaginary lines on the professor's throat and flower petal bruises on his skin. _Drats_ , he thought, before catching himself, floating back to himself.

His dratsing gaze tripped, fell, and retreated over Way's glazzies. Hazel, he always noticed, since the first divvus. Most every class they found some reason rokker, whether it was from Way's desire to leave the orbit of Prawf Antony or Frank's willingness to be a distraction. And most every class Frank's apathetic appraisal discovered his AP looking more and more trashed. More tired, wrung out and nervous. _That's Hove_ , Frank had thought. _You get tired, you get scared, you get numb, you get weird._ He wondered when Way would submit to Hove's poison. 

“What's wrong?” The words tumbled out of his mouth like Aramaic on the tongue of a true believer. It took monumental strength of will for Frank not to appear as disgusted and bewildered by this question as he felt. No one had asked _what's wrong_ in Hove City since he'd arrived as a freshman. Maybe _so keres_ —what are you doing—but never _what's wrong_ , never that small tension between his eyebrows, that spot where his third eye of empathy and kindness had closed long ago in the dying throes of puberty. 

Way looked at him steadily—equal parts defensiveness and gratitude, as if he was aware of the self-loathing tumult in his student's mind. Might've started to say something, then abandoned the effort and blinked once, painful and slow, like an old animatronic mannequin at an arcade. 

Red, raw eyelids. Like the pretty petal bruises Frank had imagined earlier. “I—I know it's not a big deal. Probably happens all the time--”

“ _That's_ what you said about Prawf Antony,” he interrupted insolently, spinning his phone in his fingers before putting it away and crossing his arms. “And you've spent every class up here with me.”

“Not _every_ —”

“So _what-happened_ , dedoochka? Looks like you haven't had a good spat in a while.”

Way shrugged and kept his glazzies on his elbows on his knees. “If that means sleep then you're right. But that's nothing new. Look—Frank, have you ever... do you ever go out at night?”

Frank snorted and barked a quick derisive laugh. “See some lewdies pony up for moonrise, Way? Don't bleed over it, s'just how it is around here.”

“No, I mean, yeah? I think? I mean I definitely encountered some unexpected...lewdies. But I've--”

Frank's subconscious buzzed distantly: _he's a prawf, an enemy. Scorn._ “My advice is to get over it. It's the first and definitely not the last time you'll catch students out of bed.”

“Students?” Way asked incredulously. “No, I...I just, I've never been held at gunpoint before.”

Frank sat up, his apathy a thick blanket fog, but something shifted behind his vaulted memories. Couldn't tell if it was good or bad. “Her'y?”

He noticed the AP's rookers shaking, tiny tremors blurring the outlines of his red knuckles and pale fingers in the air. Frank tried but still couldn't really feel any different about this information. So what if some dratsing lewdie held a cannon to his prawf's head? _Not my problem._

“Got lowered to the ground and everything, execution style. And I—all I can remember really is the masks, the way they were all just _masks_.”

Held back a snort and leaned close to the alien. “ _Don't_ go out after moonrise anymore, ken me? Nothin'll happen to you, I swear it, but stay inside, koshka.” Can't stop the dratsing. It's constant. A necessary holiday. Keeps the kids from getting trapped in Hove's poison clockwork. 

“That's just it,” Way interrupted Frank's runaway train. “Every night, I'm still up, at the same time as before. With this itch. Like a _need_ to go out and _do_ something. Anything. I'm afraid one night I won't be able to shake it off.”

Frank stilled, heard his tick-tocker tick tocking riotously in his chest. Way felt it, _really_? Way wanted to join the dratsing? Way fought it _every night?_ Frank could hardly fight it for an hour.

“Uh—” Frank paused to wet his lips, swallowed drily. “An itch, huh?”

The AP shook his head, dragged a rooker through the red hair at the back of his neck, and briskly changed the subject. “It's nothing. Just the new place, probably. Anyway, Frank, the homework is garbage and all, but you really need to practice this stuff before the first exam.”

Frank suffered an unwelcome image of Prawf Keller smiling her queer goblin smile over Frank's transcript, saw the told-you-so glare on her face as she told Frank he was being expelled. 

“I can't fail this class,” he muttered. 

Way blinked, same way Mikey had. “Jesus, you won't fail, I promise.” _(What does he know?)_ “The exam is Monday. It'll just be on star and moon formation. Basic stuff.”

The Assistant Professor was so god-damned empathetic Frank could almost see the shimmer of his own shock and dread reflected in Way's face. A small regret lanced through his mind, that the itch this chal described would soon spoil the genuinity of his personality till he was inside-out and oddy knocky. 

“I can help you go over the material?” Way quested, picking at his nails for a distraction, as if he were a young lad asking Frank to the Winter Ball. Honest, endearing, poor koshka. “My office hours are booked, but I can free up some time around noon.”

He should take the offer. Knew it. He could haggle for the exam questions and wring this naive fool for all he was worth. Instead Frank spat: “They gave you an office?”

He shuffled and shrugged. “I'm kind of a big deal.”

“To _who?_ The _Astronomy department?_ ”

Narrow hazel slits, hard and pointed like barbed wire. God but he was easy to read. “You make it sound like we sit around a Ouija board all day and compare Tarot arrangements.”

“Until a week ago, that's what I thought Astronomy _was_.”

“Frank, we've been in class for two weeks.”

“Way, I've been training my Gengar for _two weeks_.”

Dark eyebrows pinched and lifted, equal parts wry amusement and exasperation. A small smile bit at the AP's lips. “If you weren't such a convenient distraction, I'd say you're the worst student I've ever had.”

“So tell me, _sir_ ,” Frank hissed softly, lurching over the armrest to loom closer to Way, who crouched in the aisle as per usual. “Exactly how _distracting_ am I?”


	5. Chapter 5

# The Caduceus

“All I'm saying is, a textbook published outside the _80s_ might help with student interest.”

Gerard's office only had two chairs in it, since the room was approximately the size of a janitor's closet and really didn't allow for much more than that— _two's a crowd_ , he guessed. Books leapt off the walls at the occupants and witty astronomy posters shouted at them from the wallspace remaining beside the small shadeless window that was carved out of the far plaster wall. A ceiling mobile containing the nine _original_ planets wavered gently in the stirring atmosphere.

Ray Toro pulled his fork out of his instant noodles for a moment just to jab it in Gerard's direction. “Why bother? I don't know what school you went to for your undergrad, but at a community college, especially a small-time deal like this one, no one actually comes to _learn_ anything. They come for the piece of paper at the end of the four-year beatpath. It's nine part dinlo to think you can actually teach these kids anything-”

“Ray,” Gerard interrupted gently. “You _are_ a kid. I mean, a graduate, sure, but you can't see yourself as that far removed from them, can you?”

“It's totally different, Gerard. You and I have integrated into the system, which, like it or not, we all have to do some divvus. But these lewdies are still living in the past; they're waging an imaginary war against _the man_ and _the adult_ and whatever other fictional embodiment of authority they think is out to get them. That's why they're all so crude and careless—don't pretend you haven't noticed—and you can't _reason_ with them, man! A Bachelor's degree is a contract, a symbol of commitment to become a functioning, contributing member of society. Until they've signed off on it, new textbooks are sadly wasted on lewdie minds too fascinated with drugs and violence to even begin to understand the sacrifice good teachers like you are making for them.”

The Assistant Professor couldn't quite stifle the blanched frown he felt freezing on his face, so he angled his gaze down at the remains of his lunch. Couldn't describe the uncomfortable twinge in his gut. No, not a twinge, an omnipresent cramping _rustle_ ; he cringed at the way it boiled and yowled—partly for Ray's blood and partly for its own freedom—as if a second ghost had come to inhabit Gerard's twenty-something human shell—a stranger-ghost wild with oppression but weak and symbiotic when it came down to it, utterly dependent on its host body. He blinked rapidly and blamed the twinge on nerves. The reality was he felt a little sick, probably from the weird Hove City foodstuffs. The other reality was he liked Ray and he didn't want to argue with him, especially in a strange city with a strange language and even stranger people. Ray was his only friend. 

“But,” Then again, Gerard didn't consider himself particularly socially apt and he was _awful_ curious about the ferocious student-teacher dynamic of Port Orange. “If what you're saying is true, that they only imagine this sort of...enmity, between themselves and the authority figures here, doesn't treating them as if they aren't worth our time perpetuate that perception? Wouldn't it be better to just...imagine them equals? People exposed to low expectations mimic expected behaviors, after all.”

“Trust me, Gerard, the best thing you can do for them is keep up the age-old clockwork. I know it feels...cynical, but in this case low expectations actually do produce better results than blind faith.” The TA eyed him doubtfully with his intelligent brown eyes. “And don't you think 80s science is more interesting? Back then we still thought our genetic code was eons of divine influence beyond any other organism. And Pluto was a planet.”

Socially inept he may be, but Gerard knew a change of subject when he heard one. _(Not a subject change_ , the second ghost whispered, _a foreclosure! Not cynical, but reductionist! Fight back! Dratsdrats_ )

But this time he sighed, smiled a small compromising smile, and accepted it. “Ray, all evidence points to a massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, there might be life on Europa, and there are _countless_ other moons out there we're just learning about. Oceans of methane! Diamond rainstorms! Tell me that isn't interesting science.”

Ray sat back and the sorry wood folding chair creaked sadly. Gerard had the absurd urge to pick all of his assistant's eyelashes out. _Drats-_

“ _And_ ,” He continued. “I'm not even going to bother defending Pluto because if we used the same guidelines for planet-hood that booted it from the gang, then _Earth_ wouldn't be a planet either. It hasn't cleared its orbital path!”

The TA waved a hand and sighed, folding. “Alright, I get it. You like space. But Gerard, around here no one gives a cal about education, let alone Astronomy. Where would new books get us? I had a student in my office hours the other divvus who told me he'd pulled Cs all last year without ever opening a textbook.”

“Pete?”

Ray smiled a sly half-smile. “Little bratchny, isn't he?”

Gerard's response was cut off by the loud incessant beeping of a supply truck in reverse. The trucks arrived intermittently throughout the day to make a racket, either emptying the dumpsters or dropping off cargo at the student center. He didn't even bother to look anymore. 

When the noise stopped, Ray prodded at the remains of his lunch and eyed Gerard sympathetically. “I know what you're saying, dude, and I like your class, I really do. But Port Orange just doesn't have the budget to update textbooks for every department every year.”

A surge of affection for his TA wiped out his curious stomach pains. Too anxious, Gee. He could allow himself a friend here; a friendship is a relationship and a relationship is a two-way street, so he couldn't expect them to agree on everything. Besides, Ray wasn't _half_ as bonkers as some of the other faculty members he'd met.

“I get it,” He relaxed minutely and wheeled absently back and forth in his chair. “I'm just not used to this campus, I guess.”

The TA barked a laugh. “Trust me, you _never_ quite get used to it.”

“Best part of the day is hitting the couch and pretending to grade papers over Buffy reruns,” Gerard admitted.

Ray was lost to commiserating laughter for a few moments, then looked back at the AP with a new twinkle in his eye. “I feel you 100% dude, plus a stiff drink for the off-days. And that's a quality show so I definitely respect that.”

“It's Friday, you know,” Gerard quested, unsure. “We could...skip pretending to grade, and...do the other stuff.”

Ray Toro pretended to fan himself. “Why, Mr. Way, are you asking me on a couch-date? I never thought this day would come.”

Chuckled, surprisingly at ease. “Congratulations, you've made it to the next round of the Bachelor. Give it a month and we might even go out for drinks.”

“So glad I made the cut. Heck, it beats being alone at my place on a Friday night.”

A small knock at the door distracted the men. Ray, just inside the frame, looked up and frowned defensively. Gerard had to push his chair out from his desk and away from the half-graded homework—serving as a plate for his sandwich—to get a look.

It was Frank, from section A. He hadn't realized in class but the guy was shit over five feet tall, though there was something very self-assured about him that Gerard rather envied. 

Ignoring the inhabitants, Frank stood for a moment considering the posters on the inside of the door—an image of the Sirius constellation with the caption _Why so Sirius?_ along with an old newspaper clipping featuring Marvin the Martian cowering before the Curiosity rover—then batted at the swinging planet mobile and kind of sauntered into the office. Stepped easily over the unopened parcels and odd textbooks on the floor and leaned against the plaster wall beside the window. 

“Do you have an appointment?” Ray asked, with the careful venom he reserved for students. At the same time Gerard just managed to stutter an uncreative: “F-Frank!”

The student first eyed Ray up and down from where the TA sat just inside the door, then swung his gaze over to Gerard to do the same. “Yeah,” He directed at Ray. “As a matter of fact I _do_ have an appointment, Toro.”

Gerard tried not to shuffle or fidget or do anything stupid when his student's eyes settled back on him. “Did you forget about me, koshka?”

Ray saved the AP from a response by gritting out something about manners that had Frank firing back something in Rotja that Gerard didn't quite catch--

Another knock, brisk and loud. “Oh, Gee.”  
The melodic voice of Barbara Antony.

> _How could this get any worse?_

Professor Barbara Antony leaned into his cramped closet of an office—now more crowded than it had ever been in its history of being an “office”—and Gerard noticed she'd taken her hair down since class that morning, that she'd reapplied her perfume, that her bright fog-blue eyes were locked snakelike on his face in a way that paralyzed his fidgeting limbs.

“Professor!” He managed to acknowledge. Wondered if now was an appropriate time to blink.

“Please, just Barbara,” She insists (again), smiling as if biting down on an inside joke. Maybe she was. “Thought I'd pop over and ask a favor.”

“Of course.” He was unaware of the dumbfounded silence in the rest of the office. He was a fly caught in a web.

“There's no one else to go to, you see. You and I are probably the only people on campus with any expertise in Astronomy,” Her nose crinkles, heels click against the concrete as she shifts in the doorway. “So I was wondering if you could review my slides for next week's Physics symposium? You've received the invitation already, I suppose?”

“Err, yes, I—yes.” Gerard turned to his monitor to hit the Refresh icon on his email. “Is the network down?”

Barbara blinked, cocked her head. “Not that I know of. Why?”

“Oh, I just, I guess I thought all of this could've been put in an email.” Somewhere to Gerard's left a small boyish snort cut through his intimidated daze; he supposed that could've come off rude.

Her eyebrows, a shade darker than her honey brown hair, relay an undecipherable quirk. “Our offices are so close together, I took it as a chance to see how you were doing.”

Blinked. “Fine, thank you. And I'll, uh, get right on those—those slides.”

Barbara leaves a wink to occupy the space; the remains of the gesture echo around Gerard's office long after the sound of her heels fade down the corridor. 

A long, low whistle breaks the silence and finally washes away the venomous reminder of Antony's presence.

Ray hissed something at Frank, but Gerard, without turning, knew it would go largely ignored.

“She always neck around like that?” Frank prodded.

He nodded, numb. “All. The. Time.”

This time it was Ray's short, upturned whistle. “Baxtalo, baxtalo you.”

The foreign word jerked Gerard from his stupor; he dragged a hand over his face and took a long swig from his mug. “What's that? I think I've heard it before.”

“Means lucky,” Frank snorted, but his eyes were level and calculating and settled firmly on the Assistant Professor, a different kind of predator than Barbara. “ _Scoteena_ woman. Why you let her harass you?”

He watched his student take a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and tap one into his palm, couldn't come up with a good answer to his question. He'd been denying it for two weeks but Barbara's treatment really did feel like harassment, even if it was only small things like forcing her presence on him. He'd written it off on his nerves, told himself it was just necessary work environment interaction. He didn't think anyone would see his angle.

Ray's brow was furrowed deeply. “History with Barb?”

 _“Ex_ ,” Frank mumbled around his cigarette, nudged the window open a crack. 

“ _Frank_ ,” Gerard groaned accusingly.

A wry smile, flick of the tongue at his lip ring. “You were gonna tell him anyway, koshka. Don't worry. I haven't told anyone.”

“You can't smoke in here.”

“What are you even _doing_ here?”

“Relax,” Frank insisted, to neither man in particular. “Little snoutie'll do 'im good.”

Any argument was cut off by another round of beeping supply trucks, and Gerard lost his will to fight when his student offered him a pull and he instinctively— _gladly_ —accepted. Frazzled didn't even begin to describe his mindset. 

He recognized the symbol on the pack, a moth with a skull on its back. They were _Atropos_ cigarettes. 

Sat back after his drag and took a deep breath. It helped. And it was Friday, after all; he didn't have to see hide nor hair of Barbara until Monday and that was plenty of time to pull his shit together and figure out how to tell her off. Politely. Professionally. Subtly. Impossibly.

“The Caduceus,” came a small, distracted mutter from the window.

“What?” Ray demanded, his expression stuttering between accusation and simple disbelief. “What did you just say? How did you hear something like that?”

Gerard shushed him and eyed his student, who looked as if he didn't realize he'd spoken at all. His hazel eyes were locked in stony combat with Ray's, elbows perched on the slim windowsill. 

“Frank?”

Finally their eye contact broke and Frank looked at the AP, then turned his head back to the window and gestured to the outside. “Nothing. It's just... there. Like you said.”

It took all of two steps to cross to the window, Ray hot on his heels. In his haste to defend the sophomore from Ray's fierce dislike, Gerard approached first and instinctively laid a hand on the back of Frank's neck as if he were Mikey.

A white van was backing into the drop-off zone by the Student Center, the actual loading dock obscured by a couple of dumpsters. The van was eerily unmarked but for the dark blue decal of a staff with two opposing snakes winding around it. Other than that, the vehicle's white exterior melded almost perfectly with the soft white fog swimming around its ankles and those of passersby, lapping gently at the dark tires until they became upended black half-moons hovering above the earth. 

“Must be dropping off medical supplies...” Frank murmured around his Atropos. 

“How d'you know?” Ray asked, at the window but somehow trying to avert his eyes from the scene below, as if it made him uneasy.

“It's...” Frank paused and glanced up at the TA, then over to Gerard, searching. Gerard was too busy examining the van to really notice, but he nodded along to encourage his student's analysis. “It's just something... Gerard mentioned. I looked it up later. The staff with the snakes around it, Greek symbol for the herald's staff—the Caduceus.”

“It's _Professor Way_ to you.” Ray quipped unhelpfully.

“Ray, is there a hospital around here?” Gerard asked, eyes not leaving the strange van. 

Shrug. “The university hospital is the only local odin.”

“Why would it be dropping supplies at the student center?”

The TA shrugged again, moved away from the window. “Why d'you sound so suspicious? Most everything gets processed through the student center; all the administrative offices are up there.”

“It doesn't even have a logo on it—”

“Come off it, Gerard—”

The AP looked up, noticed how uncomfortable his assistant was, and pulled away from the window. Ray was smart enough to know a hardly-plausible answer when he gave it; moving medical supplies through the student center rather than straight to the campus hospital didn't make sense. 

“I'll see you later, Ray. I know you don't have long left for your lunch hour, and I promised Frank I'd help review for the exam.”

Ray nodded slowly. “Right, yeah. See ya later.”

The TA's soft-soled steps faded down Kubrick's polished concrete corridor like a promising epilogue to Barbara's predatory clatter, and the following silence was broken by another groan from the sorry folding chair. As a curl of smoke spiraled from the smoldering tip of Frank's cigarette and fled through the cracked window, Gerard allowed himself a moment to appreciate the way Hove's ubiquitous fog sent bright light crashing through the small window to line his student in cold silver. Frank rested an ankle over his knee and pushed the sleeves of his jacket up from his palms, the picture of rebellious adolescence from custom mohawk to Doc Martens. Gerard felt himself drifting into off-limits terrain—the familiar ghost of wistful attraction to the unattainable was beginning to settle over his eyes like Hove's fog—and fumbled for a minute with the items on his desk. The silence stretched but it was easy, heavy but still somehow comfortable. 

“What're you thinking?” He asked, hoping his student, as one of the most observant people he'd ever met, might have some insight on the white van that he didn't want to share within Ray's earshot. 

Frank's eyes, a glancing greenish grayish hazel in the light, slid over to him. Tiny quirk of the lip. “Think? I don't think, koshka. You guys have the offices so _you_ do the thinking.”

“Well, I value your input—”

He leans back and clasps his hands behind his neck, cigarette lurching dangerously at the corner of his grin. “The Board won't keep you long with _that_ attitude.”

“Will you cut the crap, Frank?” Gerard groaned, rubbing his knuckles in his eyes. “Look, I know everyone in this school is fucking nuts. Hell, everyone in this _town_ is fucking nuts. In two weeks I've been held at gunpoint, repeatedly antagonized by my own students, harassed by my ex-girlfriend—oh and I haven't had three consecutive hours of sleep since day one—so I'm well on my way to jumping on board the crazy train myself. But do you _honestly_ think I'm the kind of deceptive shithole who would invite you to my lunch hour just to fuck with you?”

Frank stared. Blinked.

“Sorry for swearing,” He rushes, grimacing in retrospect at his own sore professionalism.

Frank still just stared, but for once the mask of disdain seemed to have lifted. 

“I don't want us to be enemies,” Gerard breathed, unable to organize his thoughts but aching for understanding. “You're one of the only students—the only _people_ —here that I can... that I could get along with, really, and... And you listened to that random crap I rambled about in my first class and just proved Ray _so wrong_ about everything with that smart-ass Caduceus lore and I'm so _proud_ of you, man. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, but, let's just not _do_ this whole student-teacher thing. Fuck it. Sorry for swearing.”

Frank had started to grin halfway through his terrific blustering. Not his usual demonic leer, the one that depleted most of the AP's struggling reservoir of tact and eloquence, but a new and pleasantly surprised grin, almost shy. Relieved.

“Hey, Gee,” A new voice cut sharply through Gerard's office and his little brother's red jacket and douchey Ray Bans cut the quiet black and white afternoon into ribbons. “Can you foot me a few? I'm a little low on, uhh, _bread and butter_.”

Gerard rolled his eyes and fished his wallet from his desk. “So this is a robbery, huh?”

“Better keep your mouth shut, hon, or I'll plug some holes in that pretty head.” Mikey growled, hazel eyes hard, and held his long fingers up in the shape of a gun. “Bang bang.”

“Really? With the gun?”

“Don't be such a flower.”

Robbed and presumably killed, Gerard turned to introduce Frank, only to find his student glaring sullenly at his brother.

“Hey, Frankie.” Mikey smirked, turning his gun on Frank.

“ _This_ is your brother?” He gritted, rubbing his cigarette out on the plaster windowsill.

Mikey seemed to bite down on a joke. “...Rinkeni, isn't he?”

Gerard had never seen Frank blush so furiously, or at all. He really wished he knew what the heck they were talking about and why it made his student look so soundly mortified.

“When were you gonna _tell_ me?”

“When it became relevant. Like now.” His brother released a rare, delighted—and evil—grin. “Come on, _'Way'?_ You think it was a coincidence?”


End file.
